Big Move? China’s Highest Court Flirts With Transparency

A decision by China’s highest court to publicize a handful of judgments through a national online database has ignited a debate about the possibility of greater judicial transparency in the country.

Verdicts in a number of high-profile cases are now available on the official website of China’s Supreme People’s Court, including the case of former Communist Party official Li Xingong, who was sentenced to death in April after being found guilty of rape and child molestation (in Chinese).

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The symbol of the Chinese judiciary.

Chinese courts have occasionally posted decisions online, but this marks the first time the country’s highest court has moved to do so in a systematic way. While only a couple dozen cases are currently available in the new database, the Supreme People’s Court has said it plans to publish all decisions except those relating to national secrets, trade secrets and personal privacy.

Legal scholars are divided over the significance of the database in a country where courts are dominated by the ruling party, and where legal decisions are often cloaked in secrecy.

“This would be a significant development in the direction of progress towards judicial transparency and rule of law,” said University of Hong Kong law professor Albert Chen, one of a number of experts who praised the move as a step in the right direction.

Yet Fu Hualing, a leading scholar on Chinese constitutional issues, pointed out that many of the most controversial cases in China produce no verdicts because courts strongly encourage parties to settle their differences through mediation.

The notion of publishing Supreme People’s Court verdicts online was first mentioned in the court’s Third Five-Year Reform Outline in 2009, where the court announced a list of goals including “ensure public trust in the courts,” “enhance the reasoning of judgment documents” and “increase transparency.”

The publication of verdicts is partly intended to improve the quality court decisions by exposing them to public scrutiny, but Mr. Fu, who also teaches law at the University of Hong Kong, said he was skeptical the new database will offer any tangible improvements to the judicial process.

The problem, he said, rests with the nature of China’s legal system, which does not rely on judicial precedent (as in the U.S.) but instead makes decisions based on statutory laws without much explanation.

On top of that, Mr. Fu said, judges often deliver their verdicts to parties who do not have lawyers, which means they must write simple judgments in language that is easily understood. “It’s abstract reasoning without the support of case law,” he said. Decisions, in effect, “don’t say much, just the facts, the law and the conclusion,” which makes it very difficult for appeal.

While state news reports have touted the move as a signal of increased transparency, Stephan Ortmann, a research fellow at City University of Hong Kong, was also skeptical that publicizing decisions will restore faith in the system.

“As long as there is no external force or any media monitoring the court (or the rest of the government), it is likely that many will continue to distrust the court’s full transparency,” he said.

China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, elects the president of the Supreme People’s Court, as well as its judicial committee, presiding judges of other courts and judicial officers.

The court is responsible for trying China’s most influential cases, hearing appeals from others courts, supervising courts at every level and offering judicial explanations for how laws should be implemented nationally.

“The concern about lack of trust is about the larger image of judiciary, and that’s corruption,” said Mr. Fu. “What they’re doing is tackling an issue on the margins.”